Norway hit 95.9% EV share in 2025, almost achieving its goal of having no new gas cars on the road.
\nIts EV tax break only includes cheaper models in 2026, and it could change what cars people buy this year.
\nTesla was still the market share leader with 19.1% for a fifth consecutive year, although Chinese carmakers are also gaining ground.<\/p>\n
Norway is well ahead of the rest of the world in its transition to electric vehicles\u2014it’s almost complete<\/a>. EVs accounted for just under 30% of all new cars bought in the country a decade ago, and in 2025, it almost achieved its goal of not adding any new gas cars to its roads.<\/p>\n Although Norway isn\u2019t in the European Union, it has very close ties to the bloc, and in many ways it functions as a de facto member. Even though many EU countries pushed back against the Union\u2019s plan to end sales of pure combustion by 2035 (and eventually got the ban postponed<\/a>), Norway kept chasing this goal and achieved it almost a decade before the rest of Europe was supposed to.<\/p>\n The country published its car sales numbers for 2025, and they show pure electric vehicles made up 95.9% of the total. Just like the rest of Europe, Norway has been scaling back its EV incentives<\/a>, but it didn\u2019t seem to matter as most buyers still went electric last year. It used to offer VAT (value added tax) exemptions for all electric vehicles, but then it a price threshold which it\u2019s been lowering periodically.<\/p>\n In 2026, only EVs costing under $30,000 still qualify for the exemption, which means most models on sale are no longer eligible. In 2025, Tesla was the country\u2019s most popular car brand for the fifth consecutive year, with a 19.1% market share, followed by Volkswagen and Volvo. Chinese automakers increased their collective market share<\/a> to 13.7%, up from 10.4% in 2024.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t just tax exemptions that spurred the popularity of EVs in Norway. It was also increasingly heavy taxes on combustion cars, which made them uneconomical to buy. The combination of high registration fees and high fuel taxes makes buying and running a gas car more expensive than going electric, so Norwegians are choosing the latter en masse.<\/p>\n Its EV adoption rate of nearly 100% in 2025 far exceeds the European Union\u2019s average of 17%. Nordic countries lead Europe for EV adoption, with Denmark coming second after Norway, with over 50% of its new cars being electric, followed by Sweden with around 37%. Plug-in hybrids vary in popularity widely across Europe, but they accounted for 24.7% and 20.7% of all new car sales in Sweden and Finland, respectively, according to the European Environment Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n Norway almost achieved its 2017 goal of fully transitioning to electric vehicles by 2025. Most of the combustion vehicles purchased in the country last year were specialized for specific roles for which no equivalent EV was available. It will be interesting to see if Norway\u2019s upward EV sales trend continues through 2026, even with the all-important VAT exemption only applying to cheaper EVs and not including the most popular electric models that people are actually buying.<\/p>\n Reuters<\/a> suggests that the exemption, which applies only up to the current level, may boost sales of smaller, more affordable cars that buyers may not have previously considered. There is also an increasing number of good small electric cars<\/a> from European manufacturers to choose from, as well as very keenly priced Chinese models that qualify for the exemption, so 2026 could mark a shift in the size of vehicles bought in Norway.<\/p>\n \n \t\tWe want your opinion!\n\t<\/p>\n What would you like to see on Insideevs.com?<\/p>\n